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This paper seeks to evaluate how some of the core general principles of heterodox political economy (HPE) can be applied to the issue of how HPE has managed to undergo resurgence and development over recent decades.

Four major principles of heterodoxy are applied successively to this issue: historical specificity; contradiction; heterogeneous agents and groups; and circular and cumulative causation.

These principles assist in comprehending how HPE is able to develop its own concepts, networks, publications, academic departments, teaching and policy‐relevant material.

HPE has had considerable success in developing a conceptual apparatus, which helps to explain the emergence of much of its edifice being developed in academic and policy circles. The performance of HPE has been impressive.

The conceptual apparatus of heterodoxy can be applied to real world situations; specifically a component of world history over especially the past 40 years.

This is the first time such a theme has been explored in the literature.

This article explores what is meant by social economics in a set of ten specific commentaries or interpretations which appear to be widely accepted by social economists. In brief those commentaries are organized and presented in the following manner. Social economics is: heterodox; evolutionary, revolutionary, and counter‐revolutionary; a social science; a moral science; social economics because it addresses the social question; recognizes that the invisible hand does not protect the common good; anthropocentric; teleological; has vision; and has a three‐part structure. This article tends toward simplicity and brevity, the better to set forth the essential nature of social economics. Social economics is more than just a subspecialty area within or a branch of the tree of conventional economic thought. Rather social economics is an entire body of thought, a different way of thinking about economic affairs. It resembles mainstream economics in the same way that one tree resembles another. But it is a separate tree, with its own life force supplied by the scholarly energies of those who identify with social economics.

Economics and political philosophy tend to lead separate existences in separate university departments. This paper argues that there are gains to be had in the understanding of the teaching of economics if the intellectual divide between these disciplines is bridged. The history of economic thought owes its evolution in part to responses at particular points in time to the enduring questions of political philosophy. A more deep‐seated understanding of economics and of HET is therefore available if considered in conscious alliance with the history of political philosophy (HPP). In short, the argument of this paper ‐ which considers five dimensions of the interdependence of HET and HPP ‐ is the reverse of Scott Gordon’s conclusion that economists have little or nothing to learn from philosophers.

This article attempts to provide an institutionalist analysis and diagnosis of the current crisis of orthodox economics. We shall, first, characterise the predominant opinion in economics—the neoclassical synthesis. Next, we examine the anomalies which are currently vexing orthodox opinion and their power to provoke a period of crisis and extraordinary science. In the final section, we diagnose the source of the anomalies of the neoclassical synthesis.

Justice has, of late, re‐emerged as an important area of professional concern for all economists. However, in that justice is a fundamentally normative, value‐laden concept it proves troublesome to those who aspire to the strictures of “positive science”. This puts social economists in a position of distinct advantage in the consideration of justice issues for they are avowedly normative in their approach. The intention in this essay, implicit in the title, is to make some contribution to the explicit articulation of the justice criteria ensconced in the instrumentalist theory of value, and to suggest the affinity of this view with social economics.

Anghel Rugina's major contribution to social economics is that he keeps the paradigm of a social market economy evolving by promoting thought‐provoking dialogues. In that role, he is functioning as part of the spiral of the Helgelian dialectical process, where the interaction of thesis and antithesis leads to a new synthesis, by utilising his methodology of the orientation table and his new research programme. In Rugina's words: “I attempted to complete as far as possible the work of Walter Eucken (the Freiburg School) and that of Leon Walras (the Lausanne School)”. Rugina claims that he has discovered a new general paradigm which has the potential of replacing all other paradigms by unifying them in his “new research programme”.

This paper explores accounting change in the product development department of a small UK chemicals manufacturer. An institutional framework of accounting and a framework of power mobilisation help tease out the dynamics of the processes of change. The case highlights power over resources, decision making and meanings as being key facilitators to the implementation of accounting change. It also demonstrates barriers to change and conflict which emerge as new accounting routines fail to impinge on existing laboratory ways of thinking. Focusing on the processes of accounting change within a specific organisational setting illuminates aspects of the change process which more conventional “static” approaches would likely ignore.

Discusses the privatization of public goods and services in urban areas. Examines the common assumption that shifting responsibility for providing goods and services to private individuals will increase the sense of community or “social capital” that binds residents of an urban area together. Argues that privatization of goods such as public safety, education or community recreation may result in more spatially limited social capital, where individuals are less willing to cooperate for the common good. Shrinking the spatial dimensions of “community” to include only members of the same housing development or neighborhood may impose other costs to local governments that offset the expected savings from privatization.

This study aims to investigate the pattern among 17 heterodox economic journals over a prolonged period to provide evidence about the social dynamics among the group of researchers who publish in them and the extent to which they hold or develop a collective identity as heterodox economists.

Traditional approaches to citation analysis are extended by the use of techniques from social network analysis. In addition to citation counts, measures of network position and clique membership are used to identify key journals and turning points in a longitudinal analysis.

Important shifts in the nature of citation within the network of journals are identified in the 1998‐2001 period and evidence is found of the emergence of a collective identity.

The methods prove a valuable extension of citation analysis and also focus greater consideration on the social relationships that citations represent. They are well suited to addressing the principal limitation of the study, its restriction to journals within the defined community rather than journals in general.

This extends traditional approaches to citation analysis, provides an important new technique in identifying emergent collective identities and provides insight into the history and nature of the heterodox economic community.

This study aims to analyse the role of circuits of power in institutionalising competitive tendering in public sector organisations and effects on accountability among public decision makers.

The study used intensive field research data based on interviews, meeting observations and document analysis in a city, referred to as Sunset City, in Finland from 2008 to 2013.

The relationship between institutionalisation of competitive tendering and accountability for total costs of public services depends on how public officials use management accounting and control systems to limit procurement risks and how political decision makers hold public officials to account. This study uses the concept of organisational outflanking within the circuits of power to analyse and explain the finding of ceremonial accountability.

Empirical findings cannot be generalised to other situations, but the theoretical framework used in this study can be applied elsewhere.

It is advisable to avoid institutionalising macro-institutional market-based mechanisms, such as open competitive tendering in public health care organisations and municipalities in the EU, the consequences of which in terms of total costs, quality of services and accountability among organisational actors at local levels cannot be foreseen, minimised or controlled.

This study uses the framework of circuits of power to extend the Burns and Scapens institutional framework to accountability for using public funds in outsourcing services during the ongoing financial crisis.